Although it wasn't completely boring to beat up some mediocre knights and to occasionally cripple an unlucky criminal… The real fun actually took place in the dead of night. This was when I would revert to my ‘Base Form’ and slip into the orphanage.

  Over the course of two weeks, I have been inspecting the orphanage and its surroundings. I had weakened several locks, making sure that they would subtly degrade in quality as I gently drained the steel from them.

  Eventually, this granted me access to the inside of the orphanage itself, which was where the party was taking place. The inside was rather mundane, lots of hallways, play areas, a cafeteria… And of course, the bedrooms.

  I wasn’t very interested in the caretakers. It would be funnier if they were clueless about my existence, and the children weren’t believed.

  So far, I had only committed a couple of light scares to a few of the orphans. Even they were convinced that it had merely been a nightmare, tonight, I pushed open the door of a bedroom I had yet to pay a visit to.

  Naturally, the bedrooms housed several children at the same time. They all slept in most bizarre beds that were actually two beds stacked atop one another, or in some cases, three beds stacked atop one another! What a bizarre way of life… Only small creatures like them could possibly live like this.

  The orphanage was actually quite vast, and I had spotted a few of the caretakers using healing magic whilst I was scouting. So I presumed that they could potentially cast offensive spells if needed.

  This was another reason why I had decided to leave them be for now. It was too likely that I could get blasted if I tried to pill my ‘standing at the end of your bed’ routine on one of them.

  The boys and girls were separated, as they should be. But the orphaned menaces were also separated by age groups. And as easy as it was to terrify the smaller ones, they struggled to articulate their fears, so when I eavesdropped on them retelling the details of their ‘nightmares’, I found it quite boring.

  Instead, tonight I slithered into one of the rooms for some older boys. It was quite impressive just how many orphans there were, but I presumed that this orphanage was the only one in a rather wide area… That, or the people spawning these little gremlins had figured out that it was best to get as far away from them as possible.

  In any case, I moved slowly and quietly. The floorboards creaked rather loudly beneath my heavy weight, but the orphanage, being completely made from wood and seemingly not the most recent of structures, meant that creaks, squeaks, and many other noises of this nature were far from uncommon.

  After arriving at what I guessed to be the middle of the room, I looked around. Naturally, I couldn’t see anything in the darkness without ‘Forward Shine’, but the idea was to show off my glowing purple dots.

  If one of them was awake, the resulting fear of seeing such a thing would tell me exactly who the fool was.

  They were all sleeping.

  Perfect. I can pick tonight…

  I activated ‘Forward Shine’ at just about the lowest luminosity possible, looking closely for who would be my next sack of negative emotions. I naturally settled on one who had the looks of the kid nobody liked and that everybody found weird. Who would be willing to believe that guy in particular?

  I bent my knees to get to his level before poking his face. My cold finger definitely felt uncomfortable, and he stirred in his sleep, not quite waking up, though.

  Heh… Not a reactive one. That’s the sort that freezes up when scared. My favourite kind, he won’t scream and cause a scene.

  “H–Hey… Pssssst”

  My ‘pssst’ sounded more like a wire filled with lightning coming into contact with a puddle and being thrown back and forth as a result. But the boy, or perhaps young man? I frankly had no clue when you stopped using the former and switched to the latter… This little bastard opened his eyes.

  He quickly closed them again, as even the soft light I was emitting was quite harsh to someone who had just woken up.

  “What’s happenin, Miss-”

  He stopped mid-sentence. Probably realising that I was, in fact, not that Miss Whoever at all.

  “Shhhh…”

  This one sounded more like electrical crackling, but he must have gotten what I was going for, as he stayed silent and stiff. I placed my hand right atop his head.

  “Mak–Make a sound, and your h–head pops… Bl–Blink to tell me you und–understand”

  He blinked frantically.

  “G–Good. This is n–not a nightmare. Di–Disobey, and you–you–you DIE”

  He blinked again, seemed like this one was quick on the uptake, which pushed him in my estimation by a plus one, which placed him slightly above the people I wanted to slaughter alongside their entire bloodlines.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  I grabbed one of his arms and brought it up to my maw, cutting his forearm against one of my many sharp edges. This should serve as proof for him to know that this really wasn’t a dream, but the cut was nothing special, so everyone else would just assume that he had just hurt himself randomly.

  It was only evidence for himself.

  “Y–You can talk about me all you wa–want… You just nee–need to do something for me”

  I put slight pressure on his skull as I gave my command…

  The next day, something that left the caretakers greatly confused began to take place, namely, tools from the shed, kitchen utensils, and just about any item made, even just partly, out of steel began to vanish from the orphanage.

  They were being delivered to me via a most simple bush. Now… I could have just stolen all of this myself in the dead of night, but was it more fun to cause a kid to be consumed by guilt and force him to do my bidding? Yes, absolutely yes!

  He desperately wanted people to believe that his nightmares were reality, but he was far too paranoid and fearful of retribution if he dared to mention the fact that he was being forced to play deliveryman for a monster.

  The idea was merely to enjoy watching him squirm whilst he provided a feast of negative emotions, but something else happened… Every night, as I broke into the orphanage, I would make sure to pay him a visit.

  But after about a week of this, I found him twisting and turning in bed, clearly in the throes of a rather nasty nightmare, and for some reason… It felt as though it was affecting me somehow. It was like the tingling sensation of when I fulfilled a condition for a form, but not quite…

  It was like a sneeze was rising in the distance. Yes, that was the best way to describe it. The tingling sensation was not quite there yet, merely on its way.

  I kept observing him from a distance, and it was clear that the nightmares were having an effect. Bags formed beneath his eyes. He was clearly suffering from a lack of sleep, and he would wake up screaming several times every night.

  He claimed that he kept getting caught by the monster. Which he described closely to how he would describe me… Only that the ‘me’ in the nightmares was clearly even more of an awful encounter.

  Apparently, I was much bigger. My eyes were more akin to those of a human being. I had several layers of maws, claws, a generally far more bestial and monstrous appearance, and was also strangely fleshy.

  Supposedly, one of my additional maws made from flesh alone could extend several meters away from me to tear him apart.

  And for some reason, I was wearing a nice suit, apparently…

  The descriptions he would give were awfully specific and consistent. He clearly remembered the dreams in great detail.

  This definitely has to do with the ‘Nightmare Form’, right? This is the only thing that makes sense, but this is strange. I haven’t unlocked this form, and yet, it seems like it is already having an effect.

  These dreams are not normal. I might have scared him out of his wits, but suffering from constant nightmares that seemed to always follow the same set of formulas was not a normal reaction at all… Had I perhaps caused the same thing in other people as well without realising it?

  Heh… No matter. This is a potential new form we’re talking about here! I need to cause these nightmares in more people. One of the conditions might be to infect a certain number of people with these nightmares.

  What do you think, Nara?

  Considering the way the ‘tingling’, as you call it, seems to be manifesting, it does seem like there is some sort of process to completing this condition. Whether it is a certain number of people suffering from nightmares, or some sort of process that someone already suffering from them needs to go through, is unclear

  You make a good point there… Maybe the nightmares need to kill him somehow? It does sound like he is ‘losing’ in his nightmares from the way he puts it…

  I couldn’t eavesdrop on everything my victim said, but I had heard a lot. What he was struggling with were some sorts of lucid nightmares where he was fully aware of everything, and could act without the dream interfering with his actions at all.

  To him, it felt like he had suddenly woken up in a strange and bizarre place that he did not recognise, having to run away, hide, or use mechanisms he barely understood to fend off a monster. The rules seemed to change and shift with each nightmare, but the one constant was the monster he had to face.

  Which was literally a nightmarish version of myself from the sound of it.

  I had no control over my nightmare self, so it was safe to say that it just operated on its own.

  Which meant that this kid was repeatedly losing and getting caught by some figment of imagination. Embarrassing.

  Would I be able to enter people's dreams with this form? That would be quite something…

  Whilst I was thinking, sitting upon a bench in my knightly form. I was once again approached by someone, only that this one did not seem to be from the local establishment.

  His attire was more akin to that of an adventurer, albeit a more proper adventurer than the majority of those unemployed bastards.

  “With such a distinct appearance, you must be The Silent Knightess, is that right?”

  …Since when do you have a cool title like that? It does sound like it suits me, though.

  I nodded slightly.

  “This is great! I am sorry to ask you this out of nowhere–But the knight that usually joins us in our quests has been recently wounded and will be unavailable for a long while. As you know, we adventurers usually rely on fulfilling quests often for income, so… Would you be willing to accompany us for one quest? Otherwise, our team lacks someone who can actually take hits…”

  Mmh… This sounds like it could be some sort of trap, but why not? Maybe I can kill enough stuff to get a new upgrade…

  I made a sign to try and convey that I wanted to know what the quest was about.

  I don’t think he understood, but he had come with the quest in question, handing me the paper upon which the details were written.

  It was about getting rid of some bandits who were dipping their toes in all sorts of criminal activities… Huh… It sounds like they are the ones who are going into a trap, actually.

  Reading up on the bandits and what they did, this should be something the actual authorities took care of… So this was either a false quest leading to a trap, or this had been posted by said authorities who wanted to use some bait to test the waters.

  Sounds quite fun.